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Sir Arthur Lewis - Prize Lecture

Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel,
December 8, 1979

The Slowing Down of the Engine of Growth

Let me begin by stating my problem. For the
past hundred years the rate of growth of output in the developing
world has depended on the rate of growth of output in the
developed world. When the developed grow fast the developing grow
fast, and when the developed slow down, the developing slow down.
Is this linkage inevitable? More specifically, the world has just
gone through two decades of unprecedented growth, with world
trade growing twice as fast as ever before, at about eight per
cent per annum in real terms, compared with 0.9 per cent between
1913 and 1939, and less than four per cent per annum between 1873
and 1913. During these prosperous decades the LDCs have
demonstrated their capacity to increase their total output at six
per cent per annum, and have indeed adopted six per cent as the
minimum average target for LDCs as a whole. But what is to happen
if the MDCs return to their former growth rates, and raise their
trade at only four per cent per annum: is it inevitable that the
growth of the LDCs will also fall significantly below their
target? My purpose is not to predict what is going to happen, but
to explore existing relationships and how they may change.

The extraordinary growth rates of the two
decades before 1973 surprised everybody. We knew that the world
economy experiences long swings in activity; that world trade,
for example, grew faster between 1830 and 1873 than it grew
between 1873 and 1913, that is to say between four and five per
cent before 1873, compared with between three and four percent
after 1873. But a jump to eight per cent was inconceivable.

Some people were even more surprised by the
performance of the LDCs. In 1950 these people were sceptical of
the capacity of LDCs to grow rapidly because of inappropriate
attitudes, institutions or climates. The sun was too hot for hard
work, or the people too spendthrift, the government too corrupt,
the fertility rate too high, the religion too other wordly, and
so on. This kind of analysis has now almost completely gone from
the literature. In discussions at the end of the 1940s noting
that US national income per head had grown at about two per cent
a year over long periods, and noting that LDC populations were
growing at about one percent, economists in UN circles were
boldly discussing the possibility that the LDC growth rate might
be three per cent. The United Nations at the end of the 1950s
fixed five per cent as the target for the sixties, meaning by
"target" something that was unattainable but inspirational. Then
to everybody's surprise UN figures showed five per cent being
averaged already by the middle sixties. So the target was raised
to six per cent for the 70s but the figures showed six per cent
already in the early seventies, and the UN was just getting ready
to fix seven per cent for the 1980s when the recession started in
1974. I do not vouch for the accuracy of any of these performance
figures, but I think LDCs have demonstrated beyond doubt their
capacity to use physical and human resources productively.

The fast pace of world trade also played
havoc with development theory. The collapse of international
trade in the 1930s had seemed irreversible, so much so that
Keynes had even declared that we didn't need much of it anyway.
So in the 40s and 50s we created a whole set of theories which
make sense if world trade is stagnant - balanced growth, regional
integration, the two-gap model, structural inflation - but which
have little relevance in a world were trade is growing at eight
per cent per annum. Also many countries basing their policies on
the same assumption, oriented inwards mainly towards import
substitution. The fact that trade was growing rapidly was not
universally recognised until the second half of the sixties. Then
nearly every country discovered the virtues of exporting. Now we
are in danger of being caught out again. Since 1973 the growth
rate of world trade has halved, and nobody knows whether this is
temporary or permanent. But most of our economic writing
continues to assume implicitly that a return to eight per cent is
only just around the corner.

I
Let me come back to the relationship between MDCs and LDCs. The
principal link through which the former control the growth rate
of the latter is trade. As MDCs grow faster, the rate of growth
of their imports accelerates and LDCs export more. We can measure
this link. The growth rate of world trade in primary products
over the period 1873 to 1913 was 0.87 times the growth rate of
industrial production in the developed countries; and just about
the same relationship, about 0.87, also ruled in the two decades
to 1973. World trade in primary products is a wider concept than
exports from developing countries, but the two are sufficiently
closely related for it to serve as a proxy. We need no elaborate
statistical proof that trade depends on prosperity in the
industrial countries. More interesting is the evidence that the
relationship was quantitatively the same over a hundred years, so
that the two-thirds increase in the rate of growth of exports of
primary products from LDCs was no more or less than could be
predicted from the increased rate of growth of MDC
production.

Most interesting is that the coefficient is
less than one, viz. 0.87. This means that if the engine of growth
was industrial production in MDCs and exports of primary products
in LDCs, then the MDC engine was beating slightly faster than the
LDC engine. The effects of equal beating would not necessarily be
exactly the same. And there are side effects that strengthen the
connection. When the beat is faster the terms of trade are
expected to be more favorable to the LDCs (though that did not
happen this time). The domestic market prospers, so LDC
industrialisation for the domestic market is speeded; this
happened. MDCs relax their barriers to imports of manufactures,
so this trade accelerates as well. Foreign capital flows into
minerals, manufactures and infrastructure. And foreign countries
take more migrants, so that the homeward flow of remittances to
LDCs is larger in prosperous times.

Putting it all together, including the fact
that industrial production grew faster in LDCs than in MDCs, it
is not surprising that the rate of growth of gross domestic
product was just about the same in LDCs and in MDCs over the
quarter of a century ending in 1973, namely about five per cent
per annum. Since LDC population was growing faster than MDC
population, there is a big gap in the growth rates of output per
head, about four per cent in MDCs, against 2 1/2 per cent in
LDCs. The performance of LDCs was remarkable in absolute terms,
but the gap between MDCs and LDCs in income per head continued to
widen rapidly.

Here we come to our dilemma. The objective
of most people who are concerned with these matters is to narrow
the per capita gap between MDCs and LDCs. But how is one to do
this if they are linked to equal growth of total output? One
might perhaps conceive a lower rate of growth of MDCs. Many MDC
voices are calling for this - the environmentalists, the persons
who fear exhaustion of exhaustible resources, the advocates of
greater grace and leisure in our lives, and others. But if the
MDC growth rate falls, the LDC growth rate will fall too, and
LDCs will get the worst of it, since the terms of trade will move
against them. Given the link, it is in the interest of LDCs that
the MDCs should grow as rapidly as they can.

This line of argument assumes that economic
growth in response to the growth of world trade has been good for
the LDCs rather than bad. A voluminous literature denies that the
relationship is beneficial. To discuss it here in detail would
take us too far afield, but something must be said about that
part of it that declares that trade does not foster growth; or
that if it does, its kind of growth does not become
self-sustaining. (I stick to Rostow's terminology instead of the
latterday contrast between growth and development, which is less
revealing.)

Trade allegedly does not foster growth
because when it begins, a flood of imports of factory origin
destroys the handicraft manufacturing of the less developed
country: the models for this are the effects of British exports
of textiles and of iron in India and Chile in the first half of
the nineteenth century. To be sure there will be exports and soon
exports and imports will be equal. But balance of payments
equilibrium does not imply that what is lost via imports is
gained via exports, since such equilibrium is compatible with any
level of unemployment. So the alleged benefits of trade may be
taken out in the enforced leisure of unemployment. The exports,
if agricultural, do not generate enough purchasing power to
provide a base for significant industrialisation, since the
factoral terms of trade are unfavourable to tropical countries.
If mineral, their prosperity may be equally damaging from the
side of costs, since it may set a level of wages and incomes so
high that it prevents other industries from surviving, once again
taking the benefits in the form of unemployment with a balanced
payments budget. This argument is used mainly to explain why some
mineral-rich LDCs have so much unemployment, but it can be
generalised to other exports.

Trade may or may not have fostered growth
in the first half of the nineteenth century, but it surely does
so now; regression analysis shows the rate of growth of exports
as one of the most powerful elements in the rate of growth of LDC
output. Whether or not this kind of growth can become
self-sustaining is a different question. Two conditions of
self-sustaining growth are that a country has acquired a cadre of
domestic entrepreneurs and administrators, and secondly that it
has attained to adequate savings and taxable capacity. Here the
dissenters point out that export and import trade comes to be
concentrated in the hands of a few large foreign concerns
(including banking, insurance and shipping) who prevent the
emergence of domestic entrepreneurship. As to saving, this comes
significantly from profits, and if profits are in foreign hands
the domestic savings capacity is constrained. These same foreign
traders and financiers unite with the farmers in political
opposition to measures to foster industrialisation, which
threatens their market for imports, as well as their sources of
cheap labour. The economy may grow rapidly, but its growth will
not be self-sustaining, because domestic entrepreneurship and
domestic saving are both stunted.

These propositions have some validity, but
the situation they describe is not universal or inevitable, and
its significance is greatly diminished by changes in the
political climate since the onset of the great depression of
1929; also the alternative policy of balanced growth which the
criticism implies is not always feasible. Growth requires
physical infrastructure and trained manpower, even when its
purpose is only to export primary produce. Money is spent on
schools, including universities, and the country builds up a
cadre of educated persons. In these respects, which are important
also to self-sustained growth, the gap between countries with
high export ratios and those (of similar size) with low export
ratios is substantial. At some point these cadres take over the
government and pursue nationalistic policies, including curbing
the activities of foreign firms, forcing them to hire and train
domestic managers, and taxing their profits. The failure of Latin
American governments to push industrialisation before 1929 was
due to the intellectual supremacy of the doctrines of free trade
and unregulated markets, as well as to the power of the landed
classes. This supremacy has now ended everywhere in the world.
Thus countries create human capital whether they travel via
export growth or via balanced growth. Except that the opportunity
for balanced growth is given only to the larger countries. Most
MDCs are small, and have no option but to grow through exports.
Advocates of the balanced growth alternative are also always
advocates of political federation or unions of states; in the
absence of such a political framework the criticism of growth via
exports rests on unspoken and non-existent alternatives.

II
In what follows I shall assume that industrial production in MDCs
grows more slowly than it was growing before 1973, and that the
imports of these countries grow only at four per cent a year,
over the next twenty years. This is not a prediction; it is
merely the assumption whose consequences we are seeking to
analyse.

I shall also assume that LDCs want their
GDP to grow at six per cent per annum, and that this requires
their imports to grow at six per cent. This linkage follows from
the further assumption that the individual LDC will not become
more self-sufficient, perhaps because it is too small; though
LDCs as a group will have to be more self-sufficient. No
importance attaches to whether the figure for imports is the same
as the figure for the growth of gross domestic product; all that
matters is that the growth rate of exports from LDCs is assumed
to be significantly higher than the rate of growth of imports of
LDC commodities into MDCs. LDCs will continue to pay for some of
their imports out of proceeds of transfers, including foreign aid
and private foreign investment, but we shall assume that this
still leaves LDCs needing say a six per cent growth rate for
exports, while MDCs are assumed to increase their imports from
LDCs only at four per cent a year. The problem is how to
reconcile these two growth rates.

There could theoretically be a simple way,
namely for LDCs to have an ever increasing share of MDC imports,
but we have closed this door. The main link between MDC and LDC
economies has been the MDC demand for LDC primary commodities.
This has been a link in terms of physical volume, not much
affected by prices. LDCs could not sell significantly more by
reducing prices; on the contrary, they would earn substantially
less purchasing power as the terms of trade deteriorated. LDCs
could earn more by reducing the volume or by joining together in
raising prices. The direct effect of these actions would be to
reduce output, but this could be offset by investing the extra
earnings judicially. However, none of this seems to be in the
cards; so we shall assume that our problem cannot be solved by
accelerated or decelerated production of primary commodities
normally exported to MDCs.

What about manufactures? These are now 40
per cent of the exports of the non-OPEC LDCs, and are still their
fastest growing export. Could the whole problem be solved simply
by increasing the growth rate of manufactured exports to MDCs, in
substitution for primary products? I shall assume that this
cannot be done, since if it can be done my paper ends abruptly.
Also I do not think that it can be done. MDCs are willing to let
in manufactured exports when they are prosperous, since they then
have many growing industries that can take in people displaced by
imports. Our assumption that the MDC growth rate is low rules out
this possibility. It would indeed be more appropriate to assume
that MDCs will take less manufactures from LDCs rather than
more.

Our basic assumptions therefore are that
LDCs need to have their exports grow at six per cent a year, but
MDCs will increase their imports from LDCs only at four per cent
a year. What is to happen to the growth of LDC output?

Let me concede at once that from the
standpoint of the individual LDC it matters not at all what the
MDC growth rate may be. Given resources and flexibility, it can
always sell more to MDCs. However, it thereby displaces some
other LDC's trade. What one can do cannot be done by all.

At the level of arithmetic this problem now
has only one solution. If total sales from LDCs increase at six
per cent, while sales to MDCs increase at four per cent, sales to
the rest of the world (given weights of seven to three) must
increase initially at about 11 per cent per annum. Ignoring the
socialist countries, which could help by buying much more from
LDCs but won't, the LDCs can solve the problem only by
accelerating sharply their trade with each other.

Inter-LDC trade is still rather small -
about 19 per cent of the export of non-OPEC LDCs. The percentage
has not changed significantly over the past two decades despite
all the effort that has gone into creating and servicing regional
trade institutions. Can this trade take up the slack left by MDCs
as MDCs slow down?

The answer is in the affirmative. Currently
the LDCs depend on the MDCs for food, fertiliser, cement, steel
and machinery. Taken as a group LDCs could quickly end their
dependence for the first four, and gradually throw off their
dependence for machinery. They also import a considerable
quantity of light manufactures for which they are not in any
sense dependent (some $31 billion in 1977, compared with $47
billion of engineering products). They could quickly rid
themselves of these, and more gradually throw off their
dependence for machinery.

LDCs are capable of feeding themselves now,
if they adopt appropriate agrarian policies and, as our eleven
new international tropical agricultural research institutes give
us better varieties and improved technology, output should more
than keep up with population. The problem is to get through the
period while the birth rate remains obstinately high to the less
frightening times when the birth rate will have dropped below 20
per thousand. It may be a near thing, but we should make it.

As for fertilisers, cement and steel, these
are made by applying standard technology to raw materials that
are widely available outside the MDCs. Machinery is more
bothersome because important parts of this trade involve
economies of scale, continually improving technology, and
patented or secret knowledge. However, several LDCs are moving
into this field, and already machinery is 15 per cent or more of
the output of manufactures in at least eight LDCs, (India,
Brazil, Singapore, Chile, Korea, Argentina, Mexico and Israel).
LDC exports of engineering products are also growing rapidly, and
contrary to popular belief, already exceed LDC exports of
textiles and clothing in value. There is no reason why LDCs as a
group should not become nearly self-sufficient in standard types
of equipment.

If all this scope exists for inter-LDC
trade, why have the regional customs unions not been more
successful? Note three reasons.

First, a region is not a homogeneous area.
Some countries are much more advanced than others in industrial
competitiveness, to an almost inconceivable extent. These
advanced countries attract more new industries than the less
advanced, who feel exploited by the customs union. The union then
survives only if costly measures are taken to placate the less
advanced, and these measures are difficult to negotiate.

Secondly, the usefulness of the union is
maximised in sharing out industries with substantial economies of
scale, extending over the whole regional market. Each country is
anxious to keep for itself all those industries that can attain
the economies of scale within the national market. Destruction of
any of these industries by competition from another member of the
union causes a political uproar. The union is therefore safest
where it does not require internal free trade in all commodities,
but instead concentrates on those few "integration" industries as
they are called which need the whole regional market. Even this
more modest task is hard to negotiate if each member country is
to have its fair share of integration industries.

The third reason why the customs unions
have not done better is that their basic assumption - that a
country should trade most with its next door neighbours - is no
longer true in these days of very low transport costs. For
reasons of climate, soil and history the next door neighbour is
probably in the same business, and not a potential customer or
supplier. He is equally poor, and therefore offers an equally
limited market. LDCs developing new industrial products are drawn
to large rich MDC markets rather than to those of their
neighbours. Frankly, in the 1950s and 1960s aggressive developers
did not much need the support of customs unions; these offer more
to their members when world trade is stagnant than when it is
booming.

It follows, therefore, that in the
situation we are analysing, where world trade decelerates,
customs unions would be more highly prized, and would be made
more effective, especially in regard to large scale industries
with region-wide economies of scale. But even so the leading
commodities that LDCs would now have to produce to a greater
extent for each other cannot be shared out between next door
neighbours on a political basis. Food, fertilisers, cement and
fuel pick their locations more in terms of raw material
availability, and machinery will come in the first instance from
those LDCs that already have a substantial industrial base. This
new LDC trade would be worldwide, just as European and US trade
are worldwide. III I am therefore arguing that it is physically
feasible for LDCs to maintain a high rate of growth even if MDCs
decide otherwise for themselves. How does physical feasibility
translate into an effective economic framework?

One way would be to follow the customs
union route, with LDCs giving preferential treatment to imports
from other LDCs. The nucleus of this exists already in the
Protocol Relating to Trade Negotiations among Developing
Countries which came into force in 1973, with the blessing of
GATT, and which provides for negotiated preferential arrangements
among sixteen of the bigger and more advanced LDCs. The
philosophy of such an arrangement is in line with the spirit of
Bretton Woods, which recognised the rights of countries to impose
restrictions on other countries which were tending persistently
to run balance of payments surpluses, as would be the situation
if the LDCs were growing faster than the MDCs. One may doubt
however whether such different countries will get very far along
the route of preferential concessions. If they are to prefer each
other's goods, this will have to be because they are competitive
in price with those of MDCs.

In the economist's model this
competitiveness would come about automatically. The LDCs would
run a balance of payments deficit because of the MDC slowdown,
yet persist in their own rapid growth instead of slowing down
themselves. Adjustment comes in the old gold standard version
through an outflow of gold that reduces their price levels; or in
the modern versions by devaluation, which has the same effect.
The real world is more complicated. Inflation is universal, but
aggressive sellers of manufacturers have to keep their prices
down; so this set of LDCs would need special emphasis on
inflation controls. Devaluation cannot be avoided when prices
cease to be competitive, but is palliative rather than curative
in situations where it triggers further increases in domestic
costs that reinstate the differential that it was to eliminate.
LDCs have the same problems as MDCs, that the domestic price
level can no longer be controlled merely by twirling general
controls, such as the rate of interest or the supply of money or
the rate of exchange for the currency. They too now experience
the cost-push element in price determination, for which the only
remedy is same sort of incomes policy. We expect more from the
economic system than our grandparents did in the nineteenth
century, by way of full employment and faster growth, and should
not be surprised that the economic system requires more from us,
by way of supporting institutions.

These new aggressive LDCs, exporting
machinery to each other and to other LDCs, may also have problems
in financing their trade. Nearly every LDC has a separate
currency. We are envisioning Nigeria selling cereals to India for
rupees, with which it buys machinery from Brazil. Some kind of
clearing agreement may become necessary; otherwise LDC traders
will tend to do business with each other in one or more MDC
currencies, and will be constrained by the relative scarcity of
such currencies. Perhaps the IMF would straighten this out. A
more serious problem will be to finance the export of capital
goods from one LDC to another, since the seller is expected to
finance the buyer. It is not likely that the LDC exporters can do
this on their own. We must assume that they will be allowed to
raise untied loans in the MDC financial markets, perhaps using
the regional development banks as intermediaries to a greater
extent than is now the case.

But the real problem is not whether LDCs
can become competitive and hold their own in each other's market.
Problems of pricing and foreign exchange can work themselves out
in the world market. The real problem is whether LDCs will
persist in rapid growth despite the slow down of the MDCs. If the
economy is still dependent, the balance of payments will pull it
down; but if it has attained self-sustaining growth, the weakness
in the foreign exchanges merely launches a drive to export to
other LDCs, and the weakness in the balance of payments is then
only transitional.

If a sufficient number of LDCs has reached
self-sustaining growth we are into a new world. For this means
that instead of trade determining the rate of growth of LDC
production, it will be the growth of LDC production that
determines LDC trade, and internal forces that will determine the
rate of growth of production. Not many countries are ready to
make this switch. India is an obvious possibility, along with
some of the other subscribers to the Protocol of 1973. It is not
possible for all LDCs to make this switch and neither is it
necessary; for if leading LDCs grow fast and import heavily they
will substitute to some extent for the former rapid growth of
MDCs. For those who use the language of centre and periphery,
this means that a number of countries leave the periphery and
join the centre. Or if they are specially linked to each other by
preferential trade and currency arrangements, one may even speak
of the creation of a new centre consisting of former peripheral
nations that have built a new engine of growth together.

The shadow on this picture is what happens
to those LDCs whose best option has been to export raw materials
to MDCs. Our exercise starts from the assumption that the growth
rate of MDC demand is reduced, so these face surpluses and
unfavourable terms of trade. We have provided an escape for LDCs
that can turn to exporting food or manufactures, but we have not
assumed that the new core LDCs will substitute for the MDCs by
drinking more coffee or tea or using more rubber and jute. This
solution therefore involves some hardships for the less adaptable
LDCs, constrained by climate or by the small size of their
markets. A framework for helping them exists already in the IMF's
compensatory financing, and in the EEC's STABEX support; but
these are meant for temporary fluctuations. Bigger and more
persistent support would be required.

Transnational corporations would probably
play some part in the establishment of this new inter-LDC trading
network. The cadre of domestic entrepreneurs is adequate in the
more advanced industrial LDCs to manage most of the range of
light consumer goods and light engineering products. One of our
main concerns however, is to diminish reliance on MDCs for heavy
machinery and such, and this extends into fields where experience
is limited. Since we are assuming that the market will send out
price signals favouring production in LDCs, whether because of
tariffs or of currency adjustments, transnational corporations
will be eager to preserve their markets by establishing
subsidiaries behind the protective barrier. Hostility to such
corporations is universal, and their influence is diminishing in
most sectors, especially in mining, public utilities,
distribution and finance; but not in manufacturing, where judging
by advertisements in the New York Times and the financial
press, LDC governments are only too anxious to invite the
participation of transnational corporations. There are plenty of
restrictions - on the hiring of expatriate staff, on percentages
of equity owned by foreigners, on borrowing in the local market,
on technology and so on. Also in many cases joint ownership with
local capitalists or with government agencies is prescribed. A
government anxious to promote industrialisation and a corporation
anxious to preserve or extend its market find common ground.

The awkward part of the exercise is to
sustain the momentum of six per cent growth through the
transition from dependence on MDC trade to dependence on LDC
markets. During this transition the leading industrial LDCs must
establish their footholds in each others' markets, as well as
those of other LDCs; also the agrarian changes must occur which
both feed the urban population and present a growing market for
its goods and services. It is possible that some of the leading
LDCs can take this in their stride, just as German industrialists
launched their trade drive in the 1880s followed by the US after
1895, by Japan in the 1930s, and more recently by Brazil. They do
not have to begin with machinery, since LDCs still import so much
light manufactures from MDCs. They can start here and move more
gradually into machinery.

At the other extreme it is also possible
that there is simply not yet enough entrepreneurial steam in the
leading LDCs to make this transition without a supporting
framework. We have already mentioned the main international
elements of such a framework, namely preferential tariff and
currency arrangements. The domestic element consists of the
maintenance of home demand in face of stagnant world trade in
primary products, so that the economy can continue to go forward
instead of collapsing. Much of the responsibility for maintaining
momentum then falls on the government, given its large share of
the cash economy, and also the extent to which it regulates or
supports the private sector. It has to carry the responsibility
for a large investment programme (private and public) in human
and physical capital. This responsibility could not be carried
without external aid. MDCs would have to be in a mood to say: we
will not give you more trade; here for a while is more aid
instead.

The recession that started in 1974 has now
lasted long enough for LDCs to consider the possibility that MDCs
intend to maintain rates of GNP growth which will allow world
trade to expand only at around four per cent a year. This would
be a major blow to LDC growth aspirations, unless new steps were
taken to support rising participation of LDCs in LDC trade. I
have been trying to analyse what these steps might be. They ought
to figure prominently in current North-South negotiations, but in
fact they do not, since these negotiations tacitly assume that
high MDC growth rates will soon be resumed. Perhaps this
assumption will turn out to be correct; economics does not
foretell the future. For the least, LDCs should be discussing
among themselves in what directions they would wish to go, prior
to negotiations with the MDCs.

Of course, the problems tackled in this
paper would not arise at all if MDCs were willing to allow LDCs a
greater share of MDC markets. This would be the logical evolution
of a situation where LDCs grow faster than MDCs; trade with LDCs
should become an ever-increasing portion of MDC trade. We live in
a strange world. Through the 1960s and 1970s MDCs have been
dismantling their barriers to each other's trade while increasing
their barriers to LDC trade. Since imports of manufactures from
developing countries are only two per cent of the consumption of
manufactures in OECD countries, this indicates exceptional
sensitivity to minor change. Lack of sensitivity, on the other
hand, characterises the failure of developed countries to
recognise that dependence is mutual, in that the non-OPEC LDCs
take twenty per cent of OECD exports, and could therefore by
their prosperity help a little to sustain OECD prosperity. It can
hardly be an OECD interest to force the LDCs into discriminating
against OECDs sources.

Neither would these problems arise if the
MDCs would return to the attack on mass poverty within their own
borders which they launched so successfully in the 1950s and
1960s and have now abandoned; since what we all really need is
that world trade recapture its growth rate of eight per cent per
year. But that is a different story.